"Not I."
"The plague will break out suddenly in various places, and wherever there are dead bodies, there the living will fly to arms, and seek out those on whom they would wreak their vengeance."
Ivan's face turned a pale green, but he stifled his inward terror. It was indeed a terrible time that was coming.
"In the town there is a great commotion, but that does not amount to much. I know the Hétfalu folks. They are cowards and only half ours so far. There are many strangers, many traitors among them. Even when their fury is at the highest point, a gentleman with silver buttons has only to come among them with honied words, or a heyduke has only to appear among them with a stick, or, at the most, a couple of gamekeepers with loaded muskets, and they scatter and fly in all directions like startled game. It is useless; they are a race of cowards. They are a mongrel set after all. Yet here must be our starting point. We must compel the folks here to tackle to the business—a petty village cannot take the initiative without some stimulus from without."
Ivan listened to the master's words admiringly; he began to have the strong conviction that Bodza possessed the qualifications of a great general.
"We must bring in the folks from some neighbouring village just to stir them up. The people of the Tribo district are best suited for that I should think. Many of them are shepherds and herdsmen; men who lie in the fields, who can be brought together in the night time, without anyone observing it. There is a distillery in the village too, and he who says that poison is concocted there does not lie in the least. In general, every village should choose its leaders from some other village, so that the local gentry may not recognise the strange faces. Some men are easily put out if people, when they begin to supplicate, call them by their name."
Ivan nodded his head approvingly at these sage suggestions. Bodza will certainly deserve a plume of feathers in his cap, thought he.
"You will go at night to all the shepherds, one after the other, and bring them together in front of the lonely inn near the main-road. I will not tell you what you are to do, you must be guided by your own common-sense. You must not all remain on the high road however, some of you must march towards the village."
"The best hiding-place will be the headsman's dwelling."
"Will not the Zudár woman betray us?"